


Tik Tok

by binz, shiplizard



Series: Rivers Forever [1]
Category: Forever (TV), Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Clubbing, Crossover, Distractible Geek Friends, Geek Friends, Gen, Having Weird Bosses, Internet friendship, Lucas Wahl Appreciation Week, club night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-20 09:14:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3644859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/binz/pseuds/binz, https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiplizard/pseuds/shiplizard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Well, tonight he either saved Henry from being spied on by UNIT or he got a British visitor drunk and gave him a really fun club crawl to cheer him up. Either way, victory. Good job, team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tik Tok

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to idelthoughts for manning the ficathon ship! Hooray, Lucas. We appreciate you, Lucas. You too, truth!
> 
> Tiny fandom, meet tiny fandom. Forever-only-folks, all you really need to know is Peter is an apprentice wizard cop for the tiny mostly secret branch of the Met that deals with magic (but still knows about things like Google, he's great, RoL are great, check them out). RoL-only-folks, Henry Morgan is an ME for the NYPD, he can't die, he's 235 years old, no one knows why, shh it's a secret (also check it out).
> 
> And, CNs-- one instance of a homophobic slur, also Nazis are mentioned a few times.

_Bzzpzt_

Lucas’s phone goes off while he’s waiting at the counter for his coffee. Good coffee, crowded little shop but they know how to keep the line moving, none of that unnecessary commuter-rush small talk. A bit overpriced now, since the foodie blogs’d had a run on reviewing it last year, but it’s still probably the eleventh best shop he knows, and more to the point, it’s the optimal distance between his apartment and the morgue. He gets to clear his palate with the stench of taxi exhaust and summer dumpster, wake up enough to appreciate that perfect Guatemalan acidity, and it’s still hot enough to savour when he gets to work. And the pastries aren’t half bad either.

_Bzzpzt_

Right. Right. He gets his phone out of his pocket, stuffing the rest of his danish into his mouth to punch his code in and smear some apple filling around the screen.

_-u live in ny right-_

It’s PG. Hey, it’s PG. He’d just been wondering about the guy-- he’d gone absolutely silent like, almost two weeks ago. Which sure, everyone gets busy, but Lucas’d been hearing from him every couple of days for a while now, and it’s not that he’d go so far as to call himself an expert on the guy’s patterns, but it was kind of strange.

 _-new phone who dis?-_ he sends. Then--  
_-lol sorry had to-  
-yeah nyc. why? how r u?- _

_-:p its the cops m8-  
-haha good. work is sending me to ny for a few days. arrive this afternoon. if you have free time 2night or l8er want to meet up?-_

Um, holy shit. Amazing much? He almost drops his phone he starts typing so fast.

_-absolutely. i will give u the tourist special. not creepy just the best food and sites-_  
_-jealous. only place ive been sent is jersey. not that they could send me to ny i already work here-_  
_-text me around 6 pm let me know what ur night or wknd or whatever looks like. i’m free-_

_-gr8 thanks. gtg taxiing son.-_  
_-*soon. not going to surprise u by telling you i am ur father-_

_-lol i'd just ask for allowance backpay :P-_ he sends back, and waits a second, but even though it's delivered, there's no '...' to show PG's responding.

Amazing. His weekend just improved by like, oh, a thousand percent. 

He looks up and the barista’s staring at him. Must be his smile; he tries to smooth it out, be cool. “Friend,” he tells her, gesturing with the phone. “From London. Internet friend, but it’s not creepy or anything. Coming to the city for work. Figure I’ll show him the best spots, you know, the ones Frommer’s wouldn’t be able to find with-- no, no, you want me to take my coffee. That’s mine. Got it. Okay. Thanks. Bye.”

* * *

Things are a little tense when he gets to the ME office. Tense like his old high school the time the prank war had escalated too far and gotten a teacher’s ankle broken and everyone had just sucked into themselves and waited for the world to end. It’s a little like that. Nobody looks him in the eye on the way in, and he’s expecting something to be wrong by the time he gets out of his clothes and into his scrubs and down to morgue and finds Henry in his dark office, grey and sweating. 

There’s a minute when he hovers in front of Henry’s door where he really considers just slinking away and finishing his coffee in the privacy of whatever computer terminal hasn’t already been taken over by the other techs... but it’s too late, Henry’s gaze has focused, and he goes from looking like the last girl stumbling away from the cannibalistic redneck carnage to looking like Carrie after the buckets fell. And he’s looking right at him. No getting away now, Wahl. 

“Lucas?” Henry says, sounding a little sick but still awesome and British. “Did you write some sort of report on the blood sample we retrieved from Julian Glausser’s murder investigation?” 

“Well. Yeah. I mean, even if it was a mistake, a false positive for traces of black death is a really interesting lab result, right?” 

Henry just stares at him, neck moving like he wants to shout and chest heaving like he should be flashing too much cleavage on the cover of a supermarket romance novel, something swashbuckling, but after a moment he manages a strangled, “What did you write, Lucas?”

“It was a standard report-?” Lucas says, looking around for what’s making Henry do hyperventilating owl dot gif, but he’s not Henry and he can’t get the answers from the way Henry’s hung his coat up. “I put a cover letter on about the findings, I mean, because anyone was going to want to know I checked it twice, and all the citations for where I got the information on a bubonic plague antibody in the first place, but it wasn’t a paper or anything. I mean. If there was a paper, obviously you’d co-author.” 

Like, maybe it wasn’t the black death, maybe it was a weird new antigen that mimicked it, and they’d name it the Morgan-Wahl something something and they’d be famous, and it might be the zombie plague or maybe they’d predict and prevent the first outbreak and be heroes. But Henry had gone all silent about it, so he’d had to put it on the back burner and slowly churn through the research himself, not being a genius and having to do this the slow way. All he’d put in the police records was the dry findings and the cover letter. 

Wherever Henry’s brain has gone, it’s not to their Time covers and talk show circuit and Nobel prize. He’s looking downright peaky, all greasy with sweat. “It came to the attention of a physician in London--” 

Lucas’ eyes bug, but Henry reads his mind somehow and holds up a hand. 

“--Not a breach of whatever security measures the police department uses. Doctor Walid is associated with the London Metropolitan police, a branch that has some cooperation with the United States. They handled the matter of a Senator’s-- “ He breaks off. “But that’s inconsequential. I’ve been informed that we’re going to be visited. Today. Questioned.” 

“What?” Lucas frowns, mind going into a skid, no wonder everyone’s freaking out because nothing is ever good when it brings an unspecified expert all the way from England. He censors the first thing that comes to mind, which is ‘zombie plague outbreak’, but that leaves his brain too busy to stop his mouth from saying, “What, do they think we faked it? Are they going to try to get us for medical fraud? I won’t let them frame you for anything, Doc, I’ll take all the responsibility, I’m ready to go on the lam, I could be in a cabin in northern Manitoba within twelve hours, it’s part of my first-stage zombie survival plan--” 

Henry’s face goes from grey horror to grey bemused ‘Lucas please stop talking’ horror, so he comes to a stuttering stop. It’s never going to involve the survival plan. He just has to remember that. Not until it’s too late at least. And then let’s see those walking meatbags survive -40. Or mosquitoes as big as their heads. Season depending. 

“They want to determine the extent of our involvement in the Glausser case, apparently,” Henry says, looking as freaked out as he did when Lucas gave him the results in the first place. Lucas wonders if he should go get him a paper bag or something. 

“Okay,” Lucas nods, doing his best to project calm. Calm, even breathing, nice and slow, no risk of popping a button on any shirt or waistcoat or whatever because the chest heaving is getting out of control. “It’ll be okay. When are they coming?” 

“We’re to expect them this afternoon.”

Crap. There go his plans. But he feels responsible for this and he’s not going to let Henry handle it alone. 

“Can I get you some tea or something-? No-?” he interprets, from the miserable expression on Henry’s face. “Okay. I’ll just. Go do the intake paperwork. For today.” 

He shoots a few glances back, not liking how Henry just looks washed out and scared. Maybe he’s on the run from the English government. Maybe he’s a serial killer, secretly? Or in witness protection? He had that creepy stalker, maybe it’s an organized crime thing. Who organizes crime in England, anyway-? 

He detours into the break area and pulls out his phone. 

_-hey PG have u left yet?-_

He only waits about thirty seconds for a reply, feels like forever, before he just goes on optimistically: 

_-i may be tied up at work l8, text me at 6 anyway ill tell you if im free have a good flight-_

And then he goes to do the intake paperwork, and occasionally peek through the door of Henry’s office to make sure the poor guy’s still breathing.

* * *

The rest of the morning passes without much incident; the other tech staff and MEs are already used to staying pretty clear of Doctor Morgan unless he’s given them a task, and today the morgue is like a ghost town. But not really-- although other than graveyards and the banks of rivers and probably the ocean floor, a morgue would be a top contender for being overrun if ghosts ever did rise up. Or maybe like, an old battlefield. Or maybe mass grave sites. That’s getting too emotionally overwhelming in its social commentary though, he likes to keep the landscape familiar.

Lucas uses his spare minutes and the gaps between forms to check the hours of a few places on the sly, and start putting together a list of options for PG and him, trying to guess how much time PG might have available on the weekend. He catches Henry on the phone, once, calling Detective Martinez, and not for the first time from the sound of it, but as much as Henry seems to want to get out of the office, no one has the decency to be murdered that morning. 

He packed his lunch and the new Sleight Of Hand special issue to read, but ends up just nervously playing Candy Crush on his phone through his break, half an eye on Doctor Morgan’s office. He’d closed his door, although if he stops chewing and listens he can hear that Henry’s talking to someone, too low to even make out the awesome accent. Maybe his roommate. If Detective Martinez wanted him he’d already be out the main door. 

They finish one autopsy from the new intake list; it looks complicated to start with, but by the end Henry’s found the undiagnosed ventricular septal defect that did Alan Tseng in, and they wrap it up as natural causes. Doctor Morgan looks downright disappointed. 

“Maybe there’s a connection to a case the Met are working on,” Lucas says, before he can stop himself. Henry’s back tenses where’s standing, leaning over his tool belt and collecting what needs to be cleaned. Aw shit. He’d been so good Not Talking About It.

“Perhaps,” says Henry, but the idea doesn’t seem to reassure him at all. He puts whatever he’s holding down, and Lucas watches him clutch at the tray and breathe in and out like he’s practicing for a natural birth or something. “Although why travel all this distance, and with such little notice--” he stops himself, straightens stiffly in that weird look-how-coldly-stoic-I-am-please-get-me-a-fainting-couch way, and clears his throat. 

“I think we’re done with Mister Tseng, Lucas,” he says stiffly. “If you could see to finishing up here, I will begin the report.” He stalks back to his office, closing the door, and Lucas tries to tip toe while he puts stuff away, but it’s hard to move a full autopsy around silently, so he settles for being as quiet as he can be.

It’s not that quiet, but either Henry doesn’t notice, or it doesn’t matter that much, because as soon as one of the security guys from the front desk buzzes himself in with two other guys trailing him, Henry is right there beside him, radiating his creepy Doctor Morgan Charm.

The security guy nods up at them and steps out, and the older of the two guys, going all grey-white in that ginger way, maybe fifty? fifty-five? steps forward, the taller, younger black guy behind him. 

“Good afternoon,” the older guy says, and wow accent time. It’s probably a good thing he watched all that _Highlander_ as a kid, because this, this is what Adrian Paul was going for. “I’m Abdul Haqq Walid.” He looks to Henry, extending a hand. “We spoke on the phone, Doctor Morgan.” 

“ _Salām_ ,” Henry says, and Lucas sort of shuffles back and toward the body because he totally still has his gloves on and no one wants to be touching those, and Alan Tseng is still right there in all his post heart-failure glory. At least he’d finished stitching his y-incision back together.

 _“Al salām alaikum_ ,” Doctor Walid says, as they shake.

“Police Constable Peter Grant,” says the younger black guy, way more Jason Statham than Adrian Paul with the accent, and hey hey, it’s accent day in the lab. He gives Lucas a nod and shakes Henry’s hand, too. He leans in a little close as he does, and is-- did he just sniff Henry? 

They all smell like dead-body adjacent chemicals around here. It lingers, especially the ammonia based sanitisers that the cleaning staff uses on everything, but that seems super rude especially for someone who probably smells like airplane travel themselves. Glass houses, right? But if Henry notices he’s not saying anything. The British visitors step back and now they’re all squaring off against each other. 

“Ah,” Lucas says, and waves a hand. Which still has his glove on it. Oh well, they’ve all seen viscera before. It’s not his fault he’d just finished stitching up Mister Tseng when they came in. “Lucas. Wahl. I work here too.”

“You submitted the report,” Doctor Walid says, focusing on him. “I checked on your citations. Very interesting.” 

Henry immediately takes a step forward. “He did the bloodwork in the lab. He was never at the crime scene, and his methodology is not the question at hand.” 

He’s being protective, which is not going to work with cops, but is also really nice of him. Aw, Doc. 

“Professional interest only,” Doctor Walid agrees, and focuses on Henry again.

The police constable reminds Lucas of someone, but it’s not until he opens his mouth again and more London comes out that Lucas realizes that he’s thinking of Micky Smith. Is that racist? That’s probably racist, black + British = Micky Smith. The constable really doesn’t look much like him, too tall and a little lighter skinned? Right? He hasn’t rewatched those seasons in ages. So really it’s just the hair and the British and the eyes. He makes a mental note not to mention it. 

The constable is explaining something, and he quickly goes back over the audio track in his brain. Something something _'-bloodwork you reported is similar to what we’d see from a viral agent associated with some White Supremacist terror groups-’_ awwww it isn’t a new antigen and the Met already knows about it and they’re not going to get on the front of Times. 

Henry looks-- puzzled. Suspicious. 

“Doctor Walid specializes in these cases. We need to make sure nobody involved in the case was exposed to the agent,” says Constable Grant seriously. 

“What are the symptoms of this supposed biological agent?” Henry asks stiffly. 

“Encephalopathy,” says Doctor Walid. “Stroke-like symptoms. Falling over dead.” 

Oooh. Nazi Mad Cow disease. This has horror movie script written all over it if he doesn’t have to sign an NDA. But his giddy little plans for Troma glory get back-burnered at the furious look on Henry’s face. 

“There were no signs of encephalopathy in Julian Glausser,” Henry says sharply. “I do, in fact, thoroughly examine my patients.” 

“Aye, I’ve read your reports. Very thorough. And it was from them I got that there have been encephalopathy cases in the city within the past year. A fairly wide rash.” 

“Entirely unrelated. I helped the police on both cases. The tainted dietary supplements had a much more mundane explanation, and Glausser had nothing to do with the Aterna product.” 

“I hope that’s so.” 

“If this is a purely medical matter, why have you involved the police?” 

“Constable Grant’s here to look for signs that our Nazi terrorist organization may have killed Glausser.” Doctor Walid nods at the younger man. “And to run errands for me.” 

Henry’s stopped looking grey and started looking disapproving; Lucas can read him. He knows something the visitors don’t and he thinks they’re full of it. Constable Grant is watching him with that placid police-expression that says ‘keep talking I’ve got the tape recorder running in my brain.’ 

“You may examine my records, of course,” Henry says, coolly. “But I don’t believe that you’ll find what you’re looking for here.” 

“Thank you. I believe I will examine your records. And I may need to run tests on yourself and Mister Wahl depending on my findings, of course. May I confer with my young assistant in your office-?” 

“My pleasure,” Henry says, stiffly, and waves them past. 

As the policeman passes he collides awkwardly with Lucas, sort of stepping sideways into him-- Lucas is affronted for a second, but the guy is making a pained look like he’s got a sneeze stuck, eyes shut and brows jammed down, and this close it’s easy to see through the professionalism into the jet lag. He must have a wicked headache; he wasn’t sniffing Henry earlier, he was just trying not to fall over. 

“Long flight, buddy?” 

“Brutal, mate,” says Constable Grant, sounding less British Law and more human. “Sorry about that.” 

“Hey, no problem. Can I grab you guys a coffee? You can drink it in the office or at the computers. Or the breakroom.” 

The constable pauses. 

“It’s actually pretty okay in our breakroom.” 

“Yeah, thanks, then. Doctor Walid?” 

The response is an amazingly Scottish negative that Lucas’s brain transcribes as ‘nay’ in the renaissance festival sense. He bobs his head at both of them, gives Henry a questioning look and gets an agreement, and hurries off to make three cups of coffee, peeling off his gloves as he goes.

* * *

Somehow when he’s gone it gets sorted out that only Henry is at high risk for having Nazi Mad Cow, and Lucas and the police constable get to go sit and wait while the doctors argue about brain tissue and the NYPD’s best cases on the weird wall. 

Lucas pokes at Candy Crush on his phone for a while, refreshes his forums, hits up google news and then closes the tab because nothing’s fun. Across the waiting room, the constable is busy on his own phone. 

_Bzzpzt_

Lucas looks down as he gets a text buzz, and brightens, because it’s PG. 

_-just got your message, hectic afternoon, str8 from airport to job. its ok i’ll be late 2.-_

_-i’ll try to get an eta on when i get to go. tense here.-_  
_-btw r u ok 2 go out? didn’t think how long ur flight would be. 2 british guys in my office and they have both been up since like nopeoclock this morning.-_

_-yeah i’m fine just got a coffee. need a proper one later not breakroom coffepot but i’ll live.-_

Huh. 

Lucas looks up. Across the room, Constable Grant puts down his phone and swirls his coffee in the styrofoam cup before shooting it down. That’s kind of a weird coincidence. 

“PG?” he asks, cautiously, hoping he can play it off when he’s inevitably wrong. 

Constable Grant looks up, frowns at him. Looks down at his phone. 

“...Brick?” asks Constable Grant, equally cautious. 

Lucas’s day is now officially made. He chose _BrickintheWahl_ on his indie horror fan forum a) because Pink Floyd is awesome, b) because some jerk already had _Harveywahlbanger_ and was just sitting on the name with a 2009 registration date and 0 posts. The fact that it meant people on the board started calling him ‘brick’ was a sweet nicknamey bonus, and a couple years ago he did his best to make it stick in the real world but it didn’t take and this is the first time anyone has actually said it out loud. He beams. 

“...I get it!” he realizes a second later, now that he’s thinking about screen names. “RatedPG. P-G, Peter-Grant.” 

“Ey!” 

“Eyyy.” 

They grin at each other stupidly for a minute. 

“So, uh…” Lucas waves a hand over at the arguing doctors. “As you can see. Stuck at the office.” 

“I hear it’s tense,” PG says. 

Lucas shrugs, but can’t stop grinning. “That’s Johnny Law for you. Never bringing the party.”

“It can be very rhythmic stamping on the faces of the hard working man, I’ll have you know. Your boss is a little wound up.”

“Doctor Morgan?” Lucas considers that. It’s nicer than what a lot of people say. “I think he likes a bit more warning. Or maybe he thinks you’re going to go all Coulson in New Mexico on him.”

“...Does that make you Darcy?” PG says. 

“What, the cute, funny one? Naturally.”

“You guys aren’t actually doing stuff with wormholes though, right?” PG asks, just a shade too casually. Okay, seriously. What the hell is this about.

“Nazi Mad Cow _and_ wormholes?” Lucas says. “Are you kidding? We get in trouble when Doctor Morgan figures out what’s going on by the way the corpse’s hairspray smells or it turns out old rich people have been drinking brains.”

“Ew, really? ...wait, no. Zombies?”

“Nah, just like. Really, really fit granddads. Who then drop dead. Although I’ll be keeping my ear to the ground on what happens to the ones who didn’t die. Could be the start of it. I hope you’ve got your survival plan ready.”

“Come on, you know we’re both in major, major urban centres. If it starts here or London, we’ll be gone in the first government strike. ...I could probably get to the Alps before they nuked the city though.”

“Isolation and cold weather, that’s where it’s at. Fresh water sources, wildlife for when the canned food runs out, and freezing temperatures that will stop a zombie cold.”

“Literally,” they both say, and laugh, and okay, this is amazing. 

“Lucas.” And there’s Henry right there, giving him the fifty yard dead-eyed stare, Doctor Walid beside him. “A word?”

“Yeah, Doc,” he says, and trails Henry into his office. 

“Lucas?” Henry says, once the door is closed, and waits for him to explain. The Neil Patrick Harris lines in his forehead and the ones around his eyes are all standing out, his whole face set in some level of upset and considering and anxious that Lucas can’t come even close to figuring out, other than to think it’s probably a good thing Henry’s never shown an interest in poker. 

“Everything go okay in here, Doc?” he tries. It’s a poor attempt, but Henry just rubs between his eyes. 

“Doctor Walid and I will be continuing our discussion shortly. He may be able to provide insight into some matters.” He gets a thoughtful sort of look, but mostly it’s just sad. Aw, Doc. Lucas really, really wishes he knew what was going on. Maybe he can get some information from PG, if they do get to go out tonight. Or at least while they sit around waiting to be legs for running errands. Speaking of PG, so’s Henry. 

“I see you and Constable Grant are quite comfortable in each other’s company. From your shared joke, I would say you were already well acquainted, although your physical stance and initial meeting gave no indication of your previous relationship.”

“Oh yeah, so, funny story,” Lucas starts, and then remembers he’s talking to Henry, and how he’d insisted on calling Faceless ‘computer enthusiasts’ and might not have ever actually checked his email. But, on the other hand, Doctor Morgan is a genius, so he can probably keep up. “Turns out we’ve been chatting online for a couple years. We’re like, pretty good friends, you know, regular emails, texts, IM. I even got a text from him-- not that I knew it was him-- this morning saying he was being sent here, New York, I mean, last-minute for work. What are the chances, right?”

Henry gets his ‘stop talking, Lucas,’ face on, and Lucas shuts up. He watches as Henry sorts through what he said, trying not to fidget too much.

“You know Constable Grant?” Henry finally says, carefully.

“Yeah, through the internet.” 

“How do you-- meet. Someone. In that fashion?” 

Oh wow, poor Henry, he’s focusing hard but just looks really lost. “One of my other friends--” 

“...on the internet-?” 

“Yeah, one of my friends from the internet,” Lucas specifies without resenting it because Henry probably thinks it’s all a series of tubes. “Okay, anyway, PG-- Constable Grant, found this message written in a basement in Quenya--” a pause, but Henry says: 

“Tolkien,” and nods at him to continue. Huh, who knew. Wait, hadn’t it turned out that Henry went to Oxford, even though he tried to keep that quiet? Maybe they had to read the Silmarillion as freshmen or something.

“And one of my other friends was talking to me while he helped translate it, and I talked to PG some about it,” he continues. “We gave him a link to the forum we hang out on, he joined a discussion thread about this indie movie called _Teeth_ a while back and we talked horror and we’re friends. Friends on the internet. Internet friends. Which is like regular friends, except I didn’t know what he looked like.” 

That seems to be good enough for Henry. “Do you think he knew that you worked here?” 

“No. I don’t use my name, Doc. Or my real job. We both knew we worked with law enforcement somehow but we weren’t exchanging snapchats at work or anything.” 

Henry looks troubled, but nods. 

“Please be careful. He’s still a police officer, even if you are… internet friends.” 

“I will be. I just promised to show him around. No crime scenes--” 

Henry clears his throat awkwardly and looks away; Lucas frowns, puzzled. 

“--No crime scenes and no dead bodies,” he finishes. 

Henry shoots a last look at the two visitors, heads down in conversation out in a corner in the main room, and lets out a breath. “All right. Have a good weekend, Lucas. I hope I won't be intruding on it, but if our visitors--” 

Lucas waves him off. “Give me a call if you need anything, Doc. I mean it: cabin in Manitoba, like that. ...No? Okay. Have a good night.” 

As he gets closer to the conversation in the corner, he can hear enough to realize that it’s less serious police business and more a version of the conversation he was just having with Henry. 

“I thought I could liaise with him, get his view on the case in a more informal environment--” PG is saying, very seriously. 

Doctor Walid gives PG a kindly ‘fuck off’ expression. “Don’t try that bollocks on me, Peter. Go out to the pub with your friend, then. Remember to keep an eye out, they didn’t send you all this way to drink.” 

“Yes, sir.” Peter does a really good impression of a dutiful young cop before turning and flashing Lucas a grin of relief because yes, they are both free. “Where to, then?” he says.

“Pub?” Lucas says, because hey, Doctor Walid had just said it, and anyway, McSorley's is a good place to start if PG wants a tour after all. “Just let me get changed first. My clothes are in my locker.”

“You know the way to a copper’s heart,” PG says, and follows him out.

* * *

He doesn’t give too much of his tour-guide spiel about McSorley’s age and classic New York-ish-ism, other than to point out Houdini’s handcuffs, because PG’s face did this twitch thing when he saw ‘Since 1854’ and oh right, he’s British, they think buildings are new if they were built after Shakespeare died. So instead they each order a pint and Lucas gets some nachos and wings because it's basically dinnertime and he tries not to drink on an empty stomach. 

They pick at the food and sip at their drinks, and it feels good, natural and fun, and yeah, this is so much better than it could be. They talk about some of the forum stuff, and Lucas asks where PG’d disappeared to the past few weeks. PG says call him Peter because he’s better at responding to that, and says he can’t talk about it much but it was in the country and he wouldn’t recommend it. 

Then they swing into work generally, but Lucas can read Peter enough to know that he’s the kind of food companion that doesn’t want the messy details, so he keeps some of his better stories to himself. It may have taken two Thanksgiving dinners with his Uncle Jeff getting queasy mid-dissection anecdote, but he can learn.

He asks about Peter’s boss instead, because he obviously doesn’t just work with Doctor Walid, and this Detective Nightingale sounds way too neat, especially since Peter doesn’t want to say much about him. Lucas figures out he works for a pretty small team-- ‘Economic and Specialist Crime’, Peter says, but Lucas has worked for the City long enough to know a dumping department when he hears one. 

A couple times, a name almost comes up-- “Lesley says” and “Unofficially Lesley--” and Peter cuts off and looks upset with himself. That-- that probably isn’t good. Lucas has worked for the City long enough to know that, too. 

After the third time he slips, Peter sort of hones back in on him. He’s trying to be subtle and honestly if he weren’t two beers in and a little stiff off the plane he’d probably have Lucas singing like a bird, but Lucas does notice the really deliberate way the conversation goes from ‘Detective Nightingale’ to ‘Doctor Morgan’, and Peter asks, “So Doctor Morgan must have seen some weird shit, beat like yours,” in that just a little too casual way. 

Lucas excuses himself to the bathroom and when he comes very quietly back out he catches Peter writing something in a little notebook that he slips into the leg pocket on his pants. 

Busted, buster. 

Lucas helpfully forgets what the topic of conversation was before he left. Peter’s going to have to say it first.

Peter backs off a little, goes with, “Worked with Doctor Morgan long?” 

Mm-hmm. “A couple years, yeah.” 

“He mostly all right when things aren’t tense? It’s a difficult job, Doctor Walid tells me. He gets odd things in.” 

Lucas checks a mental box. Yep. Wormholes, weird things, and maybe too genuinely concerned about the possibility of zombies. His internet friend is… what, a man in black? 

“Well, it’s New York, right? Odd is relative.” 

“Like odd odd.” 

“Why do you ask?” Lucas pushes. “Professional interest or horror fandom? Because Doctor Morgan’s not really into horror.” He’d looked pretty traumatized when Lucas had tried to show him some of his film work and had seemed kind of offended when Lucas had joked about the undead. Not unfeeling, he’d been quick to add, undead not unperson, but Henry hadn’t appreciated it. 

“First one, actually. Weird Shit is roughly my department’s job description.” 

Okay that's awesome, and also, booyah, he knew it. Sort of. He knew something, anyway. “So. Weird shit like. Aliens? Drugs? Magic? Zombies?” 

“Not aliens,” Peter says, and takes another drink of his pint. 

“Which leaves. Ministry of magic, or UNIT, the Mutant Registration Act, chaos theory--” 

“Also probably not chaos theory.” Peter sighs. “Think more UNIT. If it were police, not military. And they had to log their hours and had a limited budget. It’s not as exciting as you think.” 

Lucas wonders if he’s lying. Lucas hopes he’s lying, a lot, and that it really is exciting. But he also hasn’t forgotten that Peter’s been asking about Henry. Also a lot. So whether he’s UNIT-- or, a memory fires off, a witchfinder-- or a shadowy conspiracy member or maybe a vampire hunter-- Henry probably needs to be taken off his radar, because Henry is a good guy. 

It’s also possible that Peter’s a young cop with a weird job who’s been having a bad few months and needs a friend. It could be all of the above, actually. 

Lucas comes up with an amazing idea. 

“So,” Lucas says casually. “What kind of music do you like? I mean, to dance to.” 

“Don’t mind drum and bass.” 

“Perfect.” Lucas slides off his barstool and makes a little bobbing motion towards the door. “I promised to show you New York, right? I know where to start.”

* * *

When it comes to removing all coherent thought from your brain, a good sound system and a good DJ are the ticket. They are also amazing for getting friends out of their own heads, so drum’n’bass night at Crobar is their first stop. It’s more electronica flavoured than reggae tonight, but with bone-rattling bass like this and the sheer volume that the main stage speakers put out, even fair to middling mixes get into your head, and Lucas buys them both a vodka Redbull and gets them out into the crowd. 

Peter is a magnet for cute club types, just like like Lucas knew he would be. For one, he left his policey-looking shirt in the check room and his thin white t-shirt shows what dedicated police PT is doing for him. Also, British. One shouted order for a bottle of water and he’s swarmed. 

Lucas loves clubs. He’s not popular, but it’s great to be somewhere full of people and big rhythmic music for a while, and just be part of New York. Right? 

He watches and approvingly sees that while Peter’s not up to grind with other boys he’s nice about it and he’s very polite with the ladies too, and ‘I’ve got a girlfriend but I’d love to just dance’ in a British accent is apparently a magic spell to summon a bunch of new friends. He drags Lucas into the throng, which is an unexpected bonus that Lucas is absolutely not complaining about, and they dance and sway as their eardrums take a pounding. Too soon they’re both dragging on their feet so they have another vodka Redbull each, gagging it down and laughing at each other’s faces, and then things get… hazy. 

Not like rohypnol hazy, just big bass and strobe-light hazy. Lucas remembers a guy trying to make some weird point about why Britain’s gun laws are oppressive-- who DOES that in a club-- and Peter just clustering up with Lucas and some of their new dance buddies and freezing him out, which was a pre-scientology Travolta level smooth move. And he remembers the lady who offers them seconds out of her fresh bottle of water because she can’t drink it all but she never lets open containers sit around in clubs, and Peter telling her that’s smart and both of them thanking her because they’re both sweaty messes. 

At one point he remembers trying not to stare at a couple of girls making out and that leads to a shouted discussion with two girls and their gay boy pal about whether girls in general also like to watch boys kissing. One of them does, one of them doesn’t, the boy pal doesn’t get a vote and they have to text Peter’s girlfriend Bev for a tie breaker. It’s almost 4am in England but she texts back anyway but her answer is _if you make out with a yank boy take pictures & don’t touch his dick_ which isn’t actually a vote so the argument is a tie. 

Around ten-thirty the DJs swap out and things get like, excessively dub-steppy, so Peter and Lucas make a break for more classical pastures with their ears still ringing and Peter’s shirt tied through his belt, because it is very, very hot in the club, and only slightly better on the street. They each grab another water from an all night convenience store and Lucas steers them over to another club he knows where it’s not drum-and-bass but the guy who spins on Friday night is in the school of Paul van Dyk and it’s completely danceable, and they bop around in the crush until Peter thumps Lucas’ shoulder and yells that he’s about to fall over. 

They both decide that Peter trying to navigate the subway all alone to get back to his hotel is not a good plan, so Peter calls Doctor Walid from the sidewalk outside the club, with the phone volume as high as it can get and one finger stuck in his ear, and gets permission to sleep at Lucas’s apartment. He hands the phone over to Lucas to give the address and contact number, and Lucas has a quick conversation with Doctor Walid that ends with “...is my hearing still bad or is that an MRI going?” because the industrial sounding thunks could be the after-effect of the club or they could… be an MRI. 

“Oh, aye,” says Doctor Walid, and hangs up. 

They trudge into the subway station. It’s two trains to get home, and they realize that they’re starving as they wait on the first platform, so Lucas heads off to a different platform because this way they can stop at his favourite Thai place on the way. 

Once they’re on that train, sitting in the middle of a car with mostly sulky club kids at one end, a few graveyard-shifters looking pale and awake, and a guy in a weather-inappropriate parka sleeping up at the front, Peter strikes up the conversation again. 

“Does your police department have anything that’s marked Code Falcon?” 

A. No  
B. Awesome name  
C. What like the studio? 

“No,” Lucas says, frowning and turning it over in his brain. He keeps trying to ignore option C so his brain of course keep circling back around to it. He opens his mouth and what comes out is: “Is that an LGBT thing, is this about making out for your girlfriend-?” 

“What-? No?” Peter says, and Lucas realizes-- 

“No they totally wouldn’t name an LGBT thing after a porn studio, that would be super insensitive.” 

And Peter gets it and starts laughing and telling this story about when he first met his governor (which is British for boss) he also thought said boss was cruising and now he’s sympathetic-- “Not that I’m going to tell him because then I would have to tell him I thought he was cruising me in the first place and that is not a conversation I’m okay with having.” 

“Oh man, nightmares, yeah.” That is not a conversation he would want to have with Henry, either. Not that there's anyway Henry's not heard the rumours about Lucas's crush, but that doesn't mean _Lucas_ has to tell him.

“He’s a lot like your governor, actually, DCI Nightingale-- old fashioned and posh. I’ve actually heard him say the words ‘capital idea’ out loud.” 

“Henry isn’t quite that-- that, but he is definitely stuck maybe in the fifties some days.” 

Peter pats the pocket on his pants that he zipped his notebook into, probably without realizing he’s doing it, and Lucas is concerned that he’s regaining enough coherence to go coppy again. “So we have to go to this Thai place, they have like, food that’s hot enough for people who are used to eating Thai food, if you’re into that.” 

“Yeah, I’m game.” 

“I’m not masochistic or anything, but I like it pretty hot,” Lucas says, not without pride, and Peter gives him a polite smile. 

Lucas is thinking about maybe a hot-food competition until they get there and order their takeout, and Peter orders a curry at the top tier on the menu, ‘Thai Hot’, which is above Extra Hot and Hot, with warnings on the menu about it. Lucas has seen the Medium make grown men cry and tells him so. 

“Mum’s from Sierra Leone,” Peter says by way of explanation, and yeah, wow, no, no hot-food-off. Lucas gets a medium-spice cashew nut with beef, and feels his eyelashes start to curl from the fumes coming out of Peter's when the boxes are handed over.

They hop another train, with about the same demographics as the last one, except the club kids are mostly white and going to a different club. They’re glaring from up front-- either ambitious racists or just resentful about Peter’s boots being authentic Doc Martens. Either way. Lucas has a pretty good radar for subway problems, and this bunch aren’t actively looking for trouble. 

Peter’s already written them off. He does drop an anecdote about some inexperienced young amateurs who weren’t ready for the racist big leagues, who he met in the country last month. And one guy who asked him if he was praying to Mecca while he was doing a soil test. 

“Didn’t tell him about Doctor Walid. Didn’t want to have a Scanners incident.” 

“I thought exploding heads were your job,” Lucas says. 

“Yeah, and do you try to make more work for yourself-? Please don’t answer that, if you’re a serial killer you’re not in my jurisdiction. Also I’m sleeping at your place tonight..” 

“I just examine them,” Lucas says, primly. He’s got an interest, not like a creepy copy-cat interest but an interest in death-- but maybe no, don’t give the cop the idea. Like he said. Later, maybe, if it comes up on the forum. “But I don’t deal with hot, sweaty unsolved mysteries. I don’t deal with… Falcon.” Lucas wags his eyebrows.

They both have a good laugh. Peter’s a good sport. 

“Really it just means weird shit,” he says, wiping a tear from his eyes, still chuckling a little. “Falcon is almost anything they can’t classify as something else. I don’t think we’ve got a proper LGBT organization. I mean, we have liaison officers, it's not the '80s anymore. And we’ve got Detective Inspector Stephanopoulos. ...there’s a joke about her. I mean. Not a good one. But there’s only the one.” 

“Yeah?” 

“‘What Happened to the Young Constable who Made a Joke about Detective Inspector Stephanopolous Being A Lesbian,’” Peter recites. 

“I don’t know, what?” Lucas asks. 

“Neither does anyone else.” 

It’s not very funny, but they’re both tired and buzzed enough to go into another laughing fit, and then one or the other of them suggests taking those pictures for Peter’s girlfriend, because they are both slightly okay maybe a bit more than slightly drunk and the this train car doesn’t have any creepy types who will make a problem. Lucas reassesses quickly: some creepy types who would make a problem for him, but not for Peter. 

They have a brief, very committed but very chaste makeout, no tongue and no inappropriate groping as promised. Lucas keeps his arm thrust out and his thumb on the volume buttons of his phone to take the pictures. It’s nice, he could be about kissing boys more often, and the zing of doing something sort of taboo in public is great, but he thinks next time he does boy-kissing it won’t be on a train. Probably will be with selfies, though. 

One of the clubbers up the train yells ‘Fags!’ at them, and they flip him off in accidental unison. They’re a good team tonight. 

“...that’s not going to be trouble for you, is it?” Peter asks, after the young tough has bravely turned around because he’s exhausted all his trouble-making nerves for tonight.

“Psh. No.” Lucas waves a hand, and forwards the pictures to Peter to send to Beverly-his-girlfriend. 

They agree that the pictures are very good pictures, raw and urban and with the homoromantic passion of days gone by placed in the modern age. 

Beverly-the-girlfriend sends back a string of laughing emojis and tells Peter not to quit his dayjob for porn. 

They agree that that’s terribly unnecessary, very hurtful, very hurtful indeed. There’s a lot of nodding seriously together, and they stagger off the train arm in arm laughing and holding their bags of Thai food. The elevator is working at Lucas’ apartment building, fortunately, and they get up to his door in once piece. Inside, Lucas grabs them both a Coke-- he’d meant to try to keep Peter drunk and out of trouble but he just can’t bring himself to pile more booze onto tomorrow’s hangover-- and then they rummage around his DVD collection for something to watch. 

It’s not even midnight, but Peter’s fading fast. It’s six in the morning for him. He wolfs down his food-- Lucas goes through his own a little less ravenously, admiring the way Peter only needs a couple glasses of water to make it through because Lucas’s eyes are watering from the smell, and he’s sitting on the other side of the couch. The volcanically hot food doesn’t even perk Peter up; he makes it through two remastered but still scratchy episodes of Pertwee’s run of Doctor Who, and passes out mid-conversation about which classic companion was the cutest. 

“--always thought Mel was super cute, is that wrong? I like her voice, it’s kind of in the anime, uh, thing, style, not aesthetic, thing, with the high-pitched emphatic-- oh, hey. Peter?” 

“Ngh.” 

“Stretch out, buddy. You’re going to get cramps if you sleep curled up like that.” 

“Mm-hm.” 

Lucas goes to grab a spare pillow and a blanket, and Peter has his boots and pants kicked off by the time Lucas finds his spare pillowcase. 

“I’ll set the alarm for seven tomorrow. It’s going to be rough, but you can do it, Doctor Walid wants you back at the morgue nice and early.” 

A snore is the response. 

Lucas rambles about getting breakfast as he crouches down and carefully unzips the leg pocket of Peter’s discarded pants, and slips out Peter’s notebook. ...nope, too many vodka Redbulls to decipher that handwriting right now, but there’s something about Isis on the last page. Shit, he really needs to read that in the morning. They cannot think Henry’s involved in something like that. He takes a few quick cellphone pictures to decipher later and tucks the notebook back into place. 

“--great coffee place tomorrow,” he wraps up, and realizes he can’t remember any of what he was just talking about. Yeah. He needs some sleep. 

He wedges the pillow under Peter’s head and puts the spare blanket over him, leaving his upper torso uncovered because it’s nice and warm and AC is for rich people. 

“Sleep tight, buddy,” he says, gently, and heads off to bed. 

Well, tonight he either saved Henry from being spied on by UNIT or he got a British visitor drunk and gave him a really fun club crawl to cheer him up. Either way, victory. Good job, team. 

He takes an aspirin and has a big glass of water, and then his head hits the pillow and that’s it.

* * *

Morning hurts, of course. Nothing dehydrates like an energy drink, right? Because who needs water with your caffeine, that’s not metabolically necessary or anything. He left his curtains open, so the sun gets him first, gets him moving and pawing the phone alarm off, and he stumbles over to his bedroom door without really processing the change from asleep to awake.

He staggers out into the living room to start the morning, and is kind of confused about the big black guy on his couch for a few seconds. Then his brain kicks in, whirr whirr, and he says, 

“Hey, PG--” 

And the lump on his couch moans. 

“Come on, I have to get you back to your boss,” Lucas coaxes. “I’ll get us some aspirin.” 

Hangovers are the price you pay for a lot of fun, and he’s good at making sure they don’t screw up his mornings. Other people don’t always seem to have the same knack, somehow. Peter sure doesn’t. 

“You drank as much as I did last night. Are you on something,” he asks a few minutes later, when Lucas gives him the aspirin and a friendly pat on the shoulder and a smile. 

“Nope.” 

“Because if you are on something. As an officer of the law. I would like you to tell me. And then give me some.” He rolls over and hides his face against the pillow for a second before reaching out for the aspirin and the glass of water. 

“Just clean living and positive thinking.”

“You don’t have many friends, do you,” Peter grumbles. 

He doesn’t mean it, he’s just being sarcastic about Lucas being good at mornings. Lucas lets it go, keeps it upbeat when he shrugs. 

A pause. Peter swings his legs off the couch and props his elbows on them. “Sorry, man. It’s not like I do, either. You’ve been great, putting me up and showing me around.” 

Good guy, Pete. He’s really relieved PG didn’t turn out to be an asshole. “Any time. It’s been amazing to have you. Really awesome.” 

Mutual nods of respect, and Lucas scoots back into his room to get dressed while Peter gets into last night’s clothes in the living room. 

“Hey, Lucas, sorry, you got any upholstery spray?” he calls in. “These do not smell all right.” 

“Yeah, I’ve got some Febreeze, let me find it,” he calls back, and goes diving for it in the hygienic-but-disorganized piles of his closet. There's not a lot of storage space in his apartment-- there's not a lot of space, period-- but he's done his absolute best to TARDIS what he has, so the bottle's a few shelving solutions back and requires some creativity to grab without taking everything else out.

“Hey, Lucas-?” Peter calls again a second later, and the tone of his voice has changed. “...you weren’t in my notebook last night, were you?” 

Shit. “Nope,” he says casually, gets into his pants too fast, makes himself stop and not run right out there with the Febreeze. When he does step out, he finds Peter dressed and holding up his notebook. To the page about Isis. Where there is a smear and what looks like a fingerprint, about the right colour to be the sauce from a medium spice take-out cashew nut with beef. 

Crap. Crap, he didn’t even notice leaving that. He’s an awful spy. 

“...Okay, you got me. I couldn’t read any of it, though.” Just don’t ask if he took any pictures. 

“Did you take any pictures?” 

Crap. 

“Look, I just wanted to see what you wrote about Henry.” 

Peter nods, leaves a silence that Lucas blunders into. 

“You kept asking about weird shit. Well, yeah, Henry is weird. But he’s not bad-weird. He’s definitely not a terrorist. Or a vampire. I checked. Whatever you think he did, whyever you think he’s involved-- he’s not. People get suspicious because he’s a little creepy, but-- that’s not supernatural. That’s just being an ME. We’re all a little poorly socialized, you know.” 

“You care about him a lot,” Peter says, and leaves another silence. Lucas manages to keep himself from tripping into this one, at least, and crosses his arms. Peter’s Jedi cop-tricks will not work on him. Twice. 

It’s not the most impressive face-off in the world. And it doesn’t last. 

Peter shuts his notebook. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think Doctor Morgan’s a suspect for anything. But what we’re dealing with-- being involved in Falcon type shit-- it doesn’t just hurt the bad guys. It gets bystanders, too. MEs. Cops.” 

“...That’s what happened to your friend.” The mysterious Lesley with the sad half-anecdotes. Oh duh. Way to bring it back up, Wahl. You were trying to make him feel better, remember? Also distract him from police work but still make him feel better.

“Long story.” Peter puts his notebook back in his pocket and zips it. “But I got a-- something like a chemical signature off of your governor. He’s had contact with weird shit, and I know you want to protect him, but that means if he’s in trouble we have to handle it.” 

Ohhh poor Henry he was totally getting an MRI last night to check for encephalopathy. Well at least that will prove to Doctor Walid that there’s nothing wrong. Also: neat world building detail for that Troma movie, Nazi Mad Cow disease has a chemical signature that experts can smell. Wait wait wait Peter _actually did_ sniff Henry back in the lab! Plot twist! Ooh, but he said it was ‘like’ a chemical signature, what if it’s actually a psychic signature? Amazing. Say nothing. Try to confirm independently. Try to be more subtle about sniffing Henry than a jetlagged cop. Be ready to deal with that office rumor about his crush starting another life-cycle. Yes. Plan in place. 

“What could happen to him? Besides holes in his brain, stroke-like symptoms, and falling over dead?” 

“...things can get bad. And they really get weird. Bone pulverization, weird wounds, young fit types having heart attacks. I’ll have Doctor Walid send you some case studies, if he’s all right with it.” 

“Okay.” Lucas has another idea. It’s less inspired than last night’s long trippy music-video of an idea, but it’s an idea. “I know where to find you online already. I can give you an unofficial head up if anything happens.” 

“That’d be helpful, actually.” _What’s the catch?_ asks Peter’s expression. 

“And-- you could let me know if Henry’s in trouble, or is trouble, with your boss. Right?” 

Long pause. Long guilty pause, kind of like when Henry was getting weird about partying at a crime scene only sadder. Wait. Had Henry been thinking of that time he took the dominatrix to the roleplay crime scene? Henry actually thought he could score with someone like Peter? Hey maybe he was doing better with the Wahl-charm than he thought... or being super hot and having an awesome British accent made you discount any hotness and awesome British accent-ness in someone else. “I’ll do what I can. Within the limits of keeping my job, all right?” 

“Right.” Firm nod. Wow, he just made an underground international spy deal. He always kind of hoped this day would come. "And you'll be the first to hear about any Nazi Mad Cow turning up."

"I-- should mention, it's not just Nazis. That's what got our attention on the case, but weird shit comes from all over. The Germans just happened to be working on some really nasty versions of weird shit in the 40's."

Lucas's brain instantly writes a sequel to Nazi Mad Cow. NAZI NECROMANCERS. MUTANTS OF THE SS.

“So. I think last night sometime before I slipped into a coma you said something about a really good coffee place-?” Peter says, switching subjects away from their underground secret spy deal. So smooth.

“If we detour we can go to like the fifth-best one. Which has the shortest line. I’ve got a list, I can take you from the bottom up or the top down.” 

“One’s enough for this trip,” Peter says. “I’m not too proud for Costa. ...that’s British for Starbucks, since you look like you’re wondering. But there’s Starbucks too. It’s a thriving invasive species.” 

“Oh, this is going to be so much better than Starbucks! Hey, if I find any weird shit, do you think they’ll send you back?” 

“Do me a favour. I was lucky I got to go this time. Nothing short of Mothman’s getting travel money for a lowly constable out of the Met any time soon.” 

“I will definitely tell you if Mothman comes across the slab.” 

“Get photo evidence. Maybe they’ll send me business class.” 

“What other kind of Falcon stuff should I be looking for-?” 

“I genuinely can’t tell you without getting in trouble.” 

“No, no, it’s okay, just cough once for yes and two for no. Uh, mutants.” 

“Lucas--” 

“Vampires.” 

“Do _not_ go looking for vampires, they are not pretty, they do not sparkle, you will know if you find them run far away from them.” 

Oh my god Peter’s face is actually kind of grey he totally wasn’t joking vampires are real and they’re the evil gross kind oh man best day ever. 

“Really not aliens?” 

“Not so far.” 

They stroll out into the morning. It's bright and already too hot, and Lucas wishes he'd remembered sunglasses, but the fifth best coffee place in town is calling his name, and he's got his cool internet friend who just happens to be a British mutant or magic and possibly alien-hunting cop at his side. It’s going to be another great day in New York.


End file.
